Dejected Hayden apologises to team

The American had been a competitive third in Friday practice, but lost his way on set-up today and struggled badly for qualifying pace.

"It's a shame because yesterday started out so good," said Hayden. "I had a great feeling with the bike. Even on used tyres I was going pretty quick yesterday."

He suspected that the set-up misadventure had begun when the track was damp in morning practice after overnight rain.

"This morning we went out on the dirty track and maybe lost direction a bit," Hayden said. "Thought some things were related to the conditions and went the wrong way, and this afternoon we just couldn't go any quicker."

The Ducati rider added that he had also mismanaged qualifying, and that the bike was faster than he had shown.

"I was waiting to try and get a tow to help me," he said. "Normally I like to qualify on my own, and I kind of lost time. Then on my second to last lap I caught [Loris] Capirossi in the last corner as he got behind Dani [Pedrosa], and ended up hurting both my last two laps.

"My ideal time ain't great, but I was 10th on the ideal time. I do feel like the bike was certainly capable of more. So I'm apologising to the team because 15th... there ain't no excuse for that. That just ain't good enough.

"But we're not going home, we're going to come back tomorrow and 30 laps around here is a long time and a lot of stuff can happen. We'll try to get a good start and recover what we can."